The procession moved along
from house to house. At every place it stopped and out from the
home were carried idols, ancestral tablets, mock-money, flags,
incense sticks, and all the stuff used in idol worship. These
were all emptied into the baskets carried by the boys. When even
the temple had been ransacked and the work of clearing out the
idols in the village was finished, the procession moved on to the
next hamlet. The villages were very near each other, so the
journey was not wearisome; and at last when every vestige of the
old idolatrous life had been taken from the homes of five
villages, the happy crowd marched back to the first village.
There was a large courtyard near the temple and here the
procession halted. The boys dropped their well-filled baskets,
and their contents were piled in the center of the court. The
people gathered about the heap and with shouts of joy set fire to
these signs of their lifelong slavery. Soon the pile was blazing
and crackling, and all the people, even the chiefs of the
villages, vied with each other in burning up the idols they had
so lately besought for blessings.
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